


Rise Again

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Airports, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male Friendship, Post-Canon, Romantic Friendship, Second Chances, Secret Identity, Suicidal Thoughts, Surfing, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Witness Protection, we need to talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 06:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10354272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: Aaron Hotchner has been on the run for five years, but that all comes to an end on a beach in Australia.This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story is suitable for readers aged 14 and up.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an attempt to fill my picfor1000 photo assignment for 2017. The original photo prompt [is here.](https://www.flickr.com/photos/41179866@N00/15446278786/) An additional twist to this challenge was to work "super singular" into the story (either the literal super singular prime number series, or something/someone singular in nature). Sadly, the story spiraled into something bigger than 1000 words (which is a challenge limit), so I failed the challenge but created something for the prompt nonetheless.
> 
> I also have to include the following influence for this story - part of a poem from _Ise monogatari_ , which is a collection of Japanese poems and stories from the 12th century purportedly to be about a man named Ariwara no Narihira. Narihira is described as someone with "[...]too much heart and too few words. He is like a withered flower whose color is gone but whose fragrance lingers". For some reason this section about the loss of love and the longing that remains from it really resonated with me for the characters in this story:
> 
> _Is he journeying  
>  alone in the dead of night   
> across that mountain   
> whose name recalls waves at sea   
> rising when the tempest blows?_
> 
>  
> 
> Okay, so here endeth the unnecessary lit lesson. Please fic on...

The storm made the sky a dark purple-grey even though the sun was rising. The waves were already high, roiling and tempestuous as they crashed the sand that curved the inlet. Beyond it, out in the open water, was where the action was going to happen but it wasn’t time yet. The storm systems had already collided at sea but the effects were still building, not quite ripe. He had some time. He was always early – a habit he couldn’t seem to break even now.

He wiggled his toes in the sand to warm them but his half-zipped wet suit took care of the rest of him. The winds from the sea were cold even though it was the height of the season. But no tourists would brave this beach today, none but the hardcore, zen-ed out, bedraggled nomads with their tattoos and scarred up boards and their auras of invincibility. He was a singularity in their midst: silent, serious, almost three decades older than the majority of them, short hair more grey than dark, neatly-trimmed beard a far cry from the goat’s scruffs most of them wore.

“Evan!” A dreadlocked kid the color of coffee and with the whitest smile he’d ever seen called to him, raising his surfboard to wave like it was an extension of his arm. He was dressed in diving shorts and nothing else, ready to face the waves of a century with nothing but his skin and bravado. The older man nodded back slightly and smiled.

“How you goin’?” Dreadlocked asked with a jut of his chin.

“Righteously,” Evan rumbled. He liked the kid’s smile. It reminded him of someone. “Just waiting for her to pretty up for me.”

Dreadlocked laughed, open mouthed and joyous. “Nice! That’s why I like you – you don’t arse about. I’m gonna go dip my wick in her anyway… see if she’ll dance with me.”

“Don’t get dead, kid.”

Dreadlocked waved him off like he was crazy. “See ya out there, Codger.”

Evan watched the kid wade out into the waist-high waves and then climb his board and paddle towards the open water. He’d have to do the same soon otherwise the rising surf would reject him, throwing him back against the cliff face that offered shelter to this sleepy coastal town. He’d be just another broken body that the locals pulled from the sea as they shook their heads at the disrespect shown to the force they lived with daily. Maybe he’d be a bit more interesting when they tried to i.d. him and discovered that his biometrics came back as a man _other_ than the one listed in his wallet. 

He got to his feet with an ache in his knees that never went away – he was old, after all – leaving his board lying in the sand for the moment as he stretched and breathed in the salt-laced wind and the crashing waves. Almost time. Maybe today it would happen… maybe. Even over the noise of the storm he heard footfalls slip in the sand behind him. Another habit he couldn’t break: hypervigilance. He waited.

“Hotch.”

The voice froze his heart in his chest and he couldn’t move for a split second while he processed it.

It wasn’t possible. It had been five years. He was mishearing things.

He turned.

The guy wasn’t dressed for the beach, dark dress shirt open at the throat already speckled with raindrops, tailored dress pants leading with pleated certainty to his aubergine sneakers with incongruous orange laces. His eyes were shadowed and lined in a way he didn’t remember, and as his hair swirled in the storm gusts, he saw flecks of grey in it. There was also a long scar running down his left cheek that made Evan’s brows lower and his gut tighten.

“No one’s called me that in a long time,” he said because he couldn’t think of anything else. His voice flattened the vowels oddly, sounding like the locals he’d lived amongst for so long, but also mixing with his soft Virginian drawl. “How did you find me, Reid?”

“It’s over.” Reid ignored the question and took a step forward. “I finally got him. Peter Lewis is dead.”

He blinked. Just like that, in one sentence, the universe had given him permission to be Aaron Hotchner again. But he couldn’t. He took a hesitant step back towards the sea because today might be the day...

“When?”

“Last week.” Reid watched him carefully, eyes cataloging everything.

“Is that how you got the scar?” Hotch pointed without really looking, tasting salt in his beard from the sea spray as he bit his lip.

“Oh. No.” Reid shuffled slightly. “I got that when I was in prison.”

“Prison?” Hotch’s eyes shot to Reid’s, one fist involuntarily curling at his side.

“It’s a long story. Nothing to do with Lewis though.” Reid shrugged it off. “I would’ve been here sooner but the Marshall Service was uncooperative about your location, and then the State Department. I had to pull rank and that took time. Then, well… flying to Australia is no small feat…”

He was trying to listen like he used to – to all the spaces between the words – but it was getting drowned out by the howl of his anger, his loneliness, the wasted futility of it all, and, inevitably, the vacuum of who he’d become.

“You can come home.” Reid looked like he was expecting something.

“Home?” It wasn’t really a question because he didn’t have one, not as Aaron Hotchner anyway. And here there was only the void of where Evan Connacher took up space, just the nothing of his sketched-out details that nonetheless poisoned Hotch’s life. Just an unremarkable ex-pat American who managed a courier service in a forgotten town in the ass end of nowhere. He was meant to be no one, nothing, never to stick out, never to matter - for survival. All Evan ever did was work, send money to his son’s boarding school in Europe, and flirt with death in the open water.

“This is home now,” he lied.

Reid waited as he synthesized something, and then raised one eyebrow. “Is it?”

It wasn’t fair that Reid could just show up after five years and slice through his layers that easily. Was he _that_ out of practice? His emotional impenetrability used to be legendary. It’s how he managed to walk away from everyone but his son. It’s how he gave up on a life it took him nearly a half century to build. It’s how he kept going until Jack got settled in his new existence - more flexible by far than his father could ever hope to be - before finally giving into the drinking and the silence. It was how he dealt with a teenaged Jack telling him that he didn’t want to come home for school holidays anymore because _“you aren’t there anyway, Dad”_. It was how, on his good days, he forgot about a bright, face-splitting smile and ignoring that he never did anything about how it used to make him feel.

“Thank you for telling me. About Lewis.” 

He wasn’t sure how to act at this intersection of pain and numbness from his resurgent dual personality. He watched as Reid’s eyebrows tented in something confused and rebuffed. Perhaps that was to be expected; he was rusty at giving a shit. He wanted out of this conversation. He wanted to be in the surge waters, vertebrae smashed against the cliff face, dying while looking up into the perfect storm over him.

“I never gave up,” Reid said suddenly, looking exhausted and haunted just as suddenly. “I’m… I’m sorry it took me so long. I tried to the best of my ability.”

“I’m sure you did, Reid,” he said quietly as the wind kicked up a notch and made the crashing waves into a siren call he was losing ground to. “I never expected that case to be resolved. Ever. No apology necessary.” At least that was true.

“So… _you_ gave up,” Reid concluded pointedly, eyebrows lowering. Hotch looked away, down to his board in the sand as lightning lit up the clouds for an instant. Then there was the rumble of distant thunder and from the corner of his eye he saw Reid flinch. He wondered if Reid would bother reciting facts about stupid people who die every year standing out in the open during thunderstorms. 

“I’ve gotta go. It’s time.” He didn’t look up, just reached for his board instead. At least he got the chance to say goodbye this time. That was a goodbye, right? _I’ve gotta go. It’s time. Have a good life._

“No, you don’t,” Reid’s voice was darker, steadier than he’d ever heard it before. Hotch wondered distantly what he’d been through in five years that had broadened him _that_ much.

“There hasn’t been a storm like this in a hundred years,” he said looking out over the grey, choppy crests. “If I don’t go I’ll miss my chance.”

“This isn’t a hobby, it’s suicide.” Reid sounded closer even though Hotch hadn’t heard him move.

“My choice,” he whispered into the wind and was certain Reid didn’t hear it.

“Come back with me.” Hotch felt Reid’s hand land on the shoulder of his wet suit, but he took a step towards the ocean and the grip slid away easily. “Help me run the Unit.”

The Unit. God, the Bureau was a distant memory. He hadn’t used his considerable brain much in the intervening years and doubted that he could ever get it back into fighting trim. At a certain age, you just didn’t bounce back from neglect.

“It was good seeing you again, Reid.” His voice choked but the wind covered it. He turned to look at him over his shoulder to let him know that despite being a husk of himself, he really did mean that. Knowing that Reid was out there in the world, still persisting, made him feel slightly better about everything. “Tell everyone ‘hi’ from me.” _Tell them not to come looking…_

“Aaron,” Reid’s voice broke over the name and the wind didn’t hide it at all. Hotch turned. Even though Reid was close enough to reach out, he didn’t. But he did take a last step forward, the lines around his eyes deeper as his expression sunk into an unambiguous plea. “I… I came all this way.”

And he just stood there as the wind battered him, his clothes now more damp than dry, and waited for _something._ For the first time Hotch didn’t have to strain to read between the words; they leaked out of Reid’s slouch, his eyes, the way his hands hung halfway between clutching or going limp at his sides… _Give me something. Do what you couldn’t before. I crossed the globe for this._

But Hotch just stared. He didn’t even try. He wasn’t really Hotch anymore; he was Evan and Evan didn’t matter to this man. He wasn’t remarkable enough to matter even if Reid hadn’t realized it yet.

Reid’s plea - that open wound of an expression - lingered until the silence was almost painful. And then like any profiler worth the title, he packed it away under a carefully constructed mask of professionalism. Because hope and reality were mutually exclusive more often than not. He slid a hand into his trouser pocket and extracted a card that he held out until Hotch drew it from him.

“In case you change your mind. It’s under your cover name.”

The card had a booking reference number, a departure gate, and a time scrawled in Reid’s distinctive writing.

“The flight is late this afternoon.” He stared at Hotch like he was memorizing him. His mouth opened as if to say something else, and then he thought better of it. Turning on his heel, he plowed back through the sand to the boardwalk that would lead him out of the inlet. He didn’t look back once, and Hotch knew that because he watched him the whole way. It took seven minutes before Reid disappeared from view. Then he looked down at the card again. The details were blurred and he rubbed the writing to see if the ink smudged from the rain, but it was still dry and fixed. A hard breath stuttered out of him then, making his chest ache. 

_Fuck. Oh, fuck. What the fuck?!_

He flipped the card over and ran a thumb over the lettering, the embossed logo in the top left corner.

**Dr. Spencer Reid  
Unit Chief, Behavioral Analysis  
Quantico, Virginia**

The ache swelled into a gut punch. _Christ, he became me. I disappeared and he carried on and stepped into my shoes._ There was a flare of resentment, of territorial ownership over something that wasn’t his anymore and would’ve been awarded to someone else as soon as he stepped away. And then that evaporated when he thought about the things Reid would’ve had to do to get himself to that beach so quickly, that he came in person instead of calling or emailing. And he remembered what Reid said: _help me run the Unit._

“Fuck,” Hotch muttered as the rain began to fall in earnest.

Lightning flashed again and the storm clouds rumbled. He turned to face the ocean, curling the card into the palm of his hand to save it from the wind and the spray. The waves in the inlet were already over eight feet - they were considerably higher out in the open water. It was now or never. These were the conditions he’d been counting on. He’d become too good to be taken down by the average waves found in this part of the world. It disappointed him when he realized that Evan had finally excelled at something and that it hamstrung him at the same time. But this storm would beat him, he was sure of it. This was his chance. The time was now.

The rain streamed over him, through his hair and beard, down his wet suit to pool in the clammy sand at his feet. He watched the waves and _longed._

Then he gently put his board down for some dirt-poor, overeager wannabe to find and boast about his good luck. He walked back to the boardwalk.

 

\-----------------------------------

 

 

The departure gate was almost abandoned - just a bored-looking airline attendant waiting for stragglers and a few people who seemed lost and had probably wandered to the wrong gate. He’d barely made it - late for the first time he could remember and he wondered what that meant. He had hesitated until it was almost beyond retrieval. As the waiting area came into full view, he stopped dead and lost more precious time.

Reid was standing just outside the empty boarding line, bag looped over his shoulders, looking around with a grim expression of disappointment. His mouth was a determined line but his eyes were huge, innocent and hurt as they cast about landing on strange faces, never the right one. He rolled the bag strap on his shoulders to cover the sigh that punched him - Hotch could see it even at a distance. Then he looked to his feet and shuffled toward the airline attendant, fishing his boarding pass from his bag.

“Reid.” Hotch’s voice sounded enormous in the cavernous space. It echoed off the walls and floors and empty seats. It even made the attendant look up. He hadn’t meant it to be that way, but it had just kicked out of him beyond his control when he watched Reid walk away for a second time. Reid turned back, his mouth a tiny, stunned O at the sound, and hands limp at his sides. It appeared that he had no idea what to do next.

Hotch got his feet moving again, striding forward with his ticket and a backpack that contained everything he could reasonably claim he owned from his life as Evan Connacher. It was both disturbing and oddly satisfying that he could stuff it all into a single bag. He moved with the determination of a man of a certain generation who was bent on an emotional display of a certain type. Men of his age didn’t hug or emote or expose themselves to friends casually. When it had to happen, it was always a rough physicality - stiff muscles and sharp slaps on the back, grim nods of _accept this_ and _this is important and serious_ ; anything to avoid questioning glares, or the whispers of ‘fag’ and ‘fairy’. Reid seemed to understand this, his body straightening as he prepared to withstand that sort of treatment. But when Hotch stopped in front of him and dropped his bag, something else happened instead.

Nothing.

Reid blinked, his mouth twitching as he tried to settle on an emotion. His eyes flicked down to the backpack at Hotch’s feet. Hotch could feel Reid’s brain ticking: _He packed a bag. But he’s hesitating._

“I… honestly didn’t think you’d come,” Reid went with eventually, still looking at the backpack, and that’s when Hotch acted.

He slipped his arms around Reid and pulled him close. He felt a shocked huff breeze against his neck as Reid thudded awkwardly against his chest, then, a moment later, Reid’s arms looped around Hotch’s back, still uncertain. Hotch tucked his face down into Reid’s shoulder and sighed, his hands cinching once to shuffle him a little closer. Then he just hung there in that moment, every inch of him soft and gentle, breathing through the comfort of it, his body becoming a singular linear expression of gratitude.

_You were **right there**. Just in the nick of time. How did you do that? There are no words for what you’ve done…_

Reid softened into him. Another huff tickled his neck, this one heated and relieved, and then Hotch felt Reid’s cheek against him, his chin tucked over his shoulder. Warm palms swept in circles along Hotch’s back, slow and hypnotic, and he had this sensation of being soothed like a child, and with a child’s faith he suddenly _believed_ that Reid had the power to fix everything. _No one’s cared enough to do that in forever,_ he thought with a messy lump at the center of him and he backed away with a wet hitch to look Reid in the eye. And Reid just watched him, waiting with those huge eyes and the dark circles under them, his mysterious scar and the oddly hopeful arch of his eyebrows. 

Hotch tried to talk but nothing happened, instead he felt Evan’s fundamental failure creep up inside him. Evan would shrug it off - _too hard_ \- and walk away. Evan would live with the regret of coming up short in an important moment because he was destined to be unremarkable. But Aaron had had enough of failing. He spread his palm along Reid’s back as his other hand curled up to Reid’s jaw and they both pulled him in. Reid’s eyes went impossibly wide a split second before their lips met. Hotch shut his and shut out the doubt that electrically circled his gut. It was better to know where he stood before he got on a plane to start his life from scratch again. Better to risk and fail than simply fail to risk.

Reid’s softness applied to the kiss as well but it was polite, indulgent. Not the reaction Hotch hoped for. His doubt circled wider and more viciously inside him. His face flamed as he ended it, pulling away with a soft slip and a noise that would’ve turned him on if he weren’t sure he’d just miscalculated. He tried to look away, and oh god, he’d forgotten they were in public too… He rubbed his thumb lightly against Reid’s jaw: _I’m sorry - this was clumsy of me._

“Aaron,” Reid murmured, and when Hotch didn’t respond he called his name again, impossibly warm and inviting. But Hotch still couldn’t find the balls to look at him. He used to be braver, he remembered.

“Well, if you insist on doing this out in the open…”

Then Reid was clutching his jaw and dragging him back in. And his mouth was hot and adamant, slipping and catching them both up again with tiny gasps and sounds that made Hotch dizzy. There was a complexity to it this time, like they’d been doing it for years and knew one another. But the reality was that they’d only been _friends_ for years, and then something crept into that friendship that neither of them expected or addressed, and then Hotch’s life collapsed in slow motion for five long years.

And then they found themselves kissing like old lovers in an airport on the other side of the world. He was one step removed from self-destruction and Reid was, well, who knew what Reid was after five years of carving his own way ahead.

Reid let him come up for air, still holding him close and staring him down intently.

“The old you would’ve wanted to address that privately,” he said.

Hotch’s eyes finally flicked to Reid’s. “I don’t have a strong grasp on the old me anymore.” There was a stab of guilt when he said it. _What if I can’t be the Aaron he remembers?_

“I can see that,” Reid mumbled thoughtfully. And then, “Does that bother you?”

“Does it bother _you?_ ”

Reid’s mouth curled in an enigmatic smile Hotch hadn’t seen before. Then an automated announcement boomed too loudly through the waiting area making them both twitch.

_Attention passengers. Final boarding call for flight NZ482 to Los Angeles. Please proceed directly to Gate 17. This is your final call._

Reid broke from Hotch’s grasp and bent to pick up his backpack. He held it out until Hotch looped it over one shoulder.

“Is that all you brought?” Reid’s eyebrows wrinkled in concern. “Seems pretty light…”

“That’s all I own,” Hotch admitted and waited for it to settle. Reid just nodded, taking in this new information and this new stranger who looked like someone he knew in stride.

“Well c’mon,” he said quietly, turning toward the sleepy attendant and sliding his arm around to press Hotch forward with a steady palm against his back. “It’s a long flight and we have plenty to talk about. Let’s get going.”

“Are you sure?” Hotch balked but handed his passport and boarding pass over to the attendant on autopilot. Reid just smiled and it felt the way his circling hands had felt only moments before. _Like faith._

“Something you’ll need to learn about me now: I don’t make moves without considering all the outcomes. Whoever we are when we walk off our flight stateside, I’m fine with it. I’ve made peace with a lot of potentialities.” 

He handed over his ticket and credentials as well, waited to be cleared, and then followed Hotch into the jetway to the plane. They walked side by side in silence until Reid spoke again, watching his sneakers as their bags bumped in the narrow corridor.

“I’d even made peace with leaving you to die on that beach.”

Hotch caught his arm and gripped it too hard. “Why?”

Reid looked at him like he could see the emptiness in him as if it were the clothes he wore, and his expression said that he was intimately familiar with that notion. “Because you can’t tell someone how to handle their pain. All you can do is give them options. From a distance, drowning can look a lot like waving.” He sighed heavily. “All I had was laying it out to you in person, to let you know that you never disappeared. That has never changed for me. The difference between you and me in this is that I always thought this day would come and that the Lewis case would end. But you didn’t.”

Hotch just stared into the _knowing_ that leaked out of Reid and it took his breath away. Quietly, a part of him thought that Reid was a better, more ingeniously dangerous profiler than he ever could have imagined.

“Whatever you do with your life now is your choice to make, Aaron. I haven’t been with you these five years. I don’t know what you’ve been through. What right would I have to stop you from walking into the sea? It would haunt me for the rest of my life if you did, but I wouldn’t deny you your right to choose. But you took my ticket instead and now I have twenty-six hours to convince you that I have a better plan to offer you.” 

“What if…” Hotch swallowed hard and shifted uncomfortably. “What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t be the person you expect me to be?” _What if my ability to be Aaron was finite and it’s all used up?_

“Then you walk away,” Reid said quietly. “You can even come back here, go back to that beach if you want. I won’t stop you. All I’m asking for is the next twenty-six hours.”

Reid watched him for a moment and seemed to be considering something. Then he made a decision and offered in a lower tone, “I’m not the man you remember either, Aaron.”

That was as obvious as the scar on his face. This considered, quiet, razor-sharp man wasn’t the boy Hotch had feared would shoot his own toe off so many years ago… A question suddenly bubbled up in him.

“Who killed Lewis?” he asked.

“I did.”

“Was there the option to take him alive?” Hotch thought of Foyet. Reid paused, but didn’t look away.

“Yes, there was,” he answered eventually.

“You considered the potentialities… and then made a choice.” Hotch’s tone was neutral. He had no high ground to climb and judge this, and he wanted Reid to know that. Reid simply nodded, and in that gesture Hotch made up his mind. _Whoever he is now, he’s worth twenty-six hours._

“Okay,” he rumbled and eased up his grip on Reid’s arm. “Let’s get this show on the road then.”

Reid smiled – that wide, face-splitting smile he never forgot – and they shuffled toward the plane’s door together. Two strangers who were about to marathon a rediscovery of one another. But perhaps when they landed they’d find that singularities were harder to shake than titles and names.


End file.
